Post by Lydia Purple on Dec 15, 2013 15:09:03 GMT -8
Having visited the US Top Forty 17 times over the past five years, Marvin Gaye finally hit the top when he went to no.1 for the first of seven weeks with his recording of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" - almost a year after Gladys Knight & The Pips' version had peaked at no.2 behind The Beatles' "Hello, Goodbye". Gaye's version was recorded before the song was given to Gladys Knight as were versions by The Miracles and The Isley Brothers. It was the Mowtown label's biggest-selling single and also spent seven weeks at the top of the US R&B chart.
Because of the success of both versions, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was the first and last no.1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1968: the Pips version was the first week of January, the Gaye version the last week of December. Gladys Knight was not pleased that Gaye's version usurped her own, and claimed that Gaye's version was recorded over an instrumental track Whitfield had prepared for a Pips song, an allegation Gaye denied. In 1985, one year following Gaye's death, the song was re-released in the UK reaching no.8 thanks to a Levi's commercial (starring Nick Kamen).
The Gaye recording has become acclaimed a soul classic. In 2004, it was placed at no.80 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, with the comment that Whitfield had produced the song with a number of artists using different arrangements, and that on the Marvin Gaye recording he had a "golden idea" when he set the song "in a slower, more mysterious tempo". In a new Rolling Stone list published in 2011, the single was placed slightly lower at 81. On the commemorative 50th Anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 issue of Billboard magazine in June 2008, the Marvin Gaye version was ranked as the 65th biggest song on the chart. It was also inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame for "historical, artistic and significant" value.
(Source: Wikipedia & The History of Rock Day by Day)